In 1963, the British secretary of state for war, John Profumo, lied in Parliament about an affair he had had with Christine Keeler. She had also been having an affair with Yevgeny Ivanov, an alleged Soviet spy.

People

Scandalmongering osteopath Stephen Ward spots Christine Keeler dancing burlesque at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho, London (in the film, the Café de Paris). Keeler is played by Joanne Whalley, who looks astonishingly like the real thing. The film's producers have done an excellent job of casting actors who look right – including John Hurt as Ward, Jeroen Krabbé as Ivanov, and a Harold Macmillan lookalike in the House of Commons scenes who is such a dead ringer for the then prime minister that you'd almost think they had computer-generated him. Except this film was made in 1988, when the last word in computer graphics was monochrome plumbers blipping up and down pixelated pipes on a Game Boy. The only letdown is what they've done to Ian McKellen, who gives a typically fine, understated performance as Profumo, but whose luxuriant hair has been shaved into something distractingly weird. Profumo had a wispy, receding hairline; McKellen's follicles are just too strong, so he ends up with a pale, stubbly front and a sort of topknot, like a Japanese warrior. Perhaps, when faced with a barrage of photographers and pressmen, Profumo may have wished he could draw a sword and start slashing – but don't get your hopes up.

Relationships

The film follows Keeler's own account of her relationship with Ward. "I loved him, but we were never lovers," she said. But it's much more forgiving of his conduct than she is, for she went on: "He would have killed me as easily as light my cigarette. He stitched me up, stitch after very neat stitch. He was bad and ruthless." In Scandal, he's naughty but nice. Ward's role remains controversial, especially in terms of the precise degree of his involvement with MI5, and to what extent this entire episode was a fit-up.

Society

Ward invites Keeler to a party at Lord and Lady Astor's country pile, Cliveden. The entertainment involves Keeler getting naked, and Ward and Ivanov chasing her round a swimming pool. Fatefully, there's another party going on at Cliveden that night: the Astors are hosting a fancy reception for Ayub Khan, the president of Pakistan. Profumo and Astor sneak away from that party to join the other one, and soon there are four tragic, middle-aged men chasing the squealing, nude teenager. Just as Profumo catches her, the other guests turn up, including a scowling Mrs Profumo and the Pakistani president. It might sound like more of a Benny Hill scene than reality – but this is essentially true.

Politics

Scandal leaves out much of the contemporary politics to focus on Keeler and Ward. For audiences unfamiliar with the story, it may not be clear why who all these people slept with was such a big deal. In real life, the hanky-panky was happening at the same time as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Berlin crisis, and the Cuban missile crisis – the high water mark of cold war paranoia. "Can you imagine how unnerving it was for me, listening to all the talk about Moscow and Washington and nuclear bombs?" said Keeler. "Being at the centre of it? … The network operated, often literally, through Stephen's hands." Literally through his hands, because his osteopathic patients included American ambassador Averell Harriman and, according to Keeler, Soviet spy Anthony Blunt and MI5 director-general Roger Hollis. They're not in the film, and nor are several other extremely famous names that pop up in the many books on the subject.

Verdict

Scandal is a well-researched and watchable tale of Keeler and Ward. Beyond that, it's not a huge surprise that a commercial film about the Profumo Affair is less interested in revealing the political complexities than it is in revealing bosoms.